My name is Beth Anderson. I'm a nurse, and I like to make websites. I'm also 
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Nurses: Let the Bidding Begin
By Beth | March 27, 2008
Here’s one approach to ending the nursing shortage. Nurseauction.com is a new site that features an auction style marketplace where nurses can bid for shifts that employers have posted. Also, nurses can post when they will available to work, and set their price.
As you can see, I’ve already gotten in on the action:
All kidding aside, I was irked lately by something an agency nurse told me. She said she was asked not to discuss her wages with her co-workers. My feeling on that was that it’s your business if you want to discuss your wages. If a hospital will pay a nurse $33/hour for a shift and an agency will pay a nurse $46/hour for the exact same shift, who are you benefiting by keeping quiet about it? It’s really no secret that agency nurses make gobs more than staff nurses. It’s a trade-off. You trade job security, upward mobility, benefits, and vacation time for higher wages. It would be interesting to see an open market like this one show what a nurse’s services are truly worth.
So if any hospitals administrators are reading this, and know that they will have a vacant shift on April 21st, I will gladly come and work in your ICU for $1893 an hour. In fact, I’ll be there with bells on.
Topics: Blog |
March 29th, 2008 at 11:34 am
Actually, one of the two angencies I looked into picking up a few shifts at had it written right into the contract that you weren’t allowed to disclose your hourly wage to the people you were working with while you were working (off the clock, go ahead). There are rules about both hospitals recruiting agency staff, and agency staff recruiting hospital staff, not to mention the akwardness that would surely be created.
That being said, most employers have a policy saying that wages are personal information and not to be shared. (I know my hospital does). Why should agency personnel not be bound by the same rules?
March 29th, 2008 at 12:18 pm
No one should be bound by these rules because it’s YOUR hourly wage, and thus YOUR personal information to do with as you choose.
I certainly understand why they would put such a clause in the contract, however my point is that keeping wages confidential benefits the agency and the hospital, but not the nurse. There’s a difference between actively recruiting staff and having a casual conversation about who’s paying what these days.
March 31st, 2008 at 5:41 pm
I saw the press release about this site and as a Marketing professional for a travel nursing company it concerned me to see nurses commoditized like this. I know that some people may say that that is what travel nursing agency does, but I like to think that recruiter/nurse relationship keeps that aspect out of travel nursing. Unlike this site where they look like they are being traded on the stock market, let alone the aspect of patient care a service like this could impact.
April 1st, 2008 at 5:55 am
Actually Jeff, that is exactly what nursing agencies do - they treat nurses services as a commodity. Why is this a bad thing? Is it not a commodity?
The thing I like about it is it makes the commodity part transparent. I think there are a lot of nurses out there that under value their own services and this needs to change.